Europe

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: China resolutely opposes any discrimination and politicization of sports and jointly with Russia will stand shouldering the true spirits of sports, as well as supporting each other, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui said on Friday.

Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin held a meeting on Friday with ambassadors to Russia representing member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is comprised of China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: Russia's financial position is stable, default is out of the question, Head of VTB Andrey Kostin said in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel.

"Real default is out of the question. Russia’s financial position always was and still is very stable, reserves of the Bank of Russia exceed the entire state external debt. There would be no problems with settlements if there was at least some rational policy from our Western partners," he said.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that he briefed the Kazakh side in detail on progress in the Russian special operation in Ukraine and shared opinions of the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, which proceed very slowly.

BERLIN, April 22 (Reuters) - A Somali man went on trial on Friday over the killing of three people and injuring of several others in a stabbing attack in southern Germany last June in proceedings to determine whether he should be held in a closed psychiatric facility.

Investigators believe the man was mentally ill at the time of the attack in the city of Wuerzburg, and so the trial will therefore establish whether he can be held criminally culpable.

He has been charged with murder, attempted murder and serious assault.

AMSTERDAM, April 22 (Reuters) - European Council President Charles Michel in a phone call on Friday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage directly with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, an EU official said.

In his call with Putin at 0800 GMT, Michel stressed in "no uncertain terms" the unacceptability of Russia's war and detailed the sanction costs the European Union is imposing on Russia, the EU official said.

VATICAN CITY, April 22 (Reuters) - The Vatican and Vietnam have agreed to upgrade their relations, which have been slowly improving since a total break after the communist victory in the Vietnam War nearly half a century ago.

A joint working group agreed at its latest meeting in Hanoi that in the near future relations would be upgraded to the level of residential representatives in both Hanoi and Rome, a Vatican statement said on Friday.

KYIV, April 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine's national postal service Ukrposhta said it had been hit by a cyberattack on Friday after sales of a postage stamp depicting a Ukrainian soldier making a crude gesture to a Russian warship went online.

Queues formed to buy the stamp when it went on sale at the postal headquarters in Kyiv last week following the sinking of the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. Kyiv said it had hit the cruiser Moskva with missiles. Russia said the ship sank while being towed in stormy seas after a fire caused by an explosion of ammunition.

ZURICH, April 22 (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights office said on Friday there was growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including signs of indiscriminate shelling and summary executions, while it said Ukraine also appeared to have used weapons with indiscriminate effects.

KYIV/MARIUPOL, April 22 (Reuters) - A Russian general said on Friday that Moscow wants to seize all of southern and eastern Ukraine, far wider war aims than it had acknowledged as it presses on with a new offensive after its campaign to capture the capital Kyiv collapsed last month.

LONDON, April 21 (Xinhua) -- British lawmakers on Thursday approved an investigation into Prime Minister Boris Johnson over claims he misled the parliament about rules-busting parties in Downing Street during lockdown, casting further doubts on his political future.

A Labour-led motion called for the Committee of Privileges to examine allegations that the Conservative prime minister misled the House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, when he denied lockdown rules were broken in Downing Street.